Editing Simulacra and Simulation (section)

=== Stages ===
{{unreferenced section|date=December 2018}}
''Simulacra and Simulation'' delineates the sign-order into four stages:<ref>{{Cite book |last=Baudrillard |first=Jean |url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/7773126 |title=Simulacres et simulation |date=1981 |publisher=Galilée |isbn=2-7186-0210-4 |location=Paris |oclc=7773126}}</ref>
# The first stage is a faithful image/copy, where people believe, and may even be correct to believe, that a sign is a "reflection of a profound reality" (pg 6), this is a good appearance, in what Baudrillard called "the sacramental order".
# The second stage is perversion of reality, where people come to believe that the sign is an unfaithful copy, which "masks and denatures" reality as an "evil appearance—it is of the order of maleficence". Here, signs and images do not faithfully reveal reality to us, but can hint at the existence of an obscure reality which the sign itself is incapable of encapsulating.
# The third stage masks the absence of a profound reality, where the sign ''pretends'' to be a faithful copy, but it is a copy with no original. Signs and images claim to represent something real, but no representation is taking place and arbitrary images are merely suggested as things which they have no relationship to. Baudrillard calls this the "order of sorcery", a regime of [[Semantics|semantic]] algebra where all human meaning is conjured artificially to appear as a reference to the (increasingly) hermetic truth.
# The fourth stage is pure simulacrum, in which the simulacrum has no relationship to any reality whatsoever. Here, signs merely reflect other signs and any claim to reality on the part of images or signs is only of the order of other such claims. This is a regime of total equivalency, where cultural products need no longer even pretend to be real in a naïve sense, because the experiences of consumers' lives are so predominantly artificial that even claims to reality are expected to be phrased in artificial, "[[Hyperreality|hyperreal]]" terms. Any naïve pretension to reality as such is perceived as bereft of critical self-awareness, and thus as oversentimental.

====Second order====
{{unreferenced section|date=September 2014}}
<!-- Merged from second-order simulacra https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Second-order_simulacra&oldid=795562497-->
Part of the three order simulacra, the '''second-order simulacra''', a term coined by [[Jean Baudrillard]], are [[symbol]]s of a non faithful representation to the original. Here, signs and images do not faithfully show reality, but might hint at the existence of something real which the sign itself is incapable of encapsulating.<ref>Baudrillard 1994 [1981], Simulacra and Simulation, University of Michigan Press, p. 6</ref>

The first-order simulacra is a faithful copy to the original and the third order are symbols that have become without referents, that is, symbols with no real object to represent but that pretend to be a faithful copy of an original. Third-order simulacra are symbols in themselves, taken for reality, and a further layer of [[symbol]]ism is added. This occurs when the symbol is taken to be more important or authoritative of the original entity, authenticity has been replaced by copy (thus reality is replaced by a substitute).

The consequence of the propagation of second-order [[simulacra]] is that, within the affected context, nothing is "real", though those engaged in the illusion are incapable of seeing it. Instead of having experiences, people observe spectacles, via real or [[metaphor]]ical control screens. Instead of the real, there is simulation and simulacra, the [[Hyperreality|hyperreal]].

In his essay ''The Precession of the Simulacra'', Baudrillard recalls a tale from a short story by [[Jorge Luis Borges|Borges]] in which a king requests a map (i.e. a symbol) to be produced so detailed that it ends up coming into one-to-one correspondence with the territory (i.e. the real area the map is to represent); this references the philosophical concept of [[map–territory relation]]. Baudrillard argues that in the [[postmodern]] epoch, the territory ceases to exist, and there is nothing left but the map; or indeed, the very concepts of the map and the territory have become indistinguishable, the distinction which once existed between them having been erased.

Among the many issues associated with the propagation of second-order simulacra to the third-order is what Baudrillard considers the termination of history. The method of this termination comes through the lack of oppositional elements in society, with the mass having become "the [[silent majority]]", an imploded concept which absorbs images passively, becoming itself a media overwritten by those who speak for it (i.e. the people are symbolically represented by governing agents and market statistic, marginalizing the people themselves). For Baudrillard this is the natural result of an ethic of unity in which actually agonistic opposites are taken to be essentially the same. For example, Baudrillard contends that [[moral universalism]] (human rights, equality) is equated with [[globalization]], which is not concerned with immutable values but with mediums of exchange and equalisation such as the global market and [[mass media]].